Move from canon mv890 to legria m52... Good idea?

[Dorthe2107]

Hi
I am from denmark, and my translation might not be the best, but I hope you understand.
my story:
Recording a lot of home video, edit with pinnacle studio and end up making dvd with corel movie factory. Have done this for 10 years by now.
I am now looking at a new video camera, legria m52.
But i have concerns about moving from mini dv to sd and digital memory. I have read that a file is max 4 gb, and my tape of one hour is about 19 gb.
Is the digital video quality as good as mini dv tapes?
Are there any concerns that i should be aware of seen from your point of view?
All comments, ideas, advice is appreciated!
Br,
Dorthe

[TreeTops]

I would recommend you move up to something that records in AVCHD or better. The canon legria m52 will do just fine. You will probably have to upgrade your computer and software in order to handle the current high definition formats if you want to edit your movies.

[julitomg]

As good as Canon miniDV cameras used to be in terms of image quality, you´ll find the Legria M52 ´s video is a lot better. Don´t pay attention to the 4 Gb file limit, it only means that your video will be recorded in 4 Gb segments but together they´ll play seamlessly. Also you ll have a major advantage over miniDV in the way of being able to have a longer recording time (it was frustrating when I taped one and a half or two hour shows and had to change tapes as fast as I could but always losing a few -sometimes precious- moments of the show, now with my new AVCHD camcorder I only have to make sure I have enough memory in my SD card to record over two hours straight and you even have different quality modes so you can have even longer recording times)
Search this site for threads involving AVCHD editing. You´ll probably need to upgrade your computer since AVCHD is much more demanding in terms of CPU proccesing horsepower and/or memory. You´ll also need to upgrade both Studio and Movie Factory to their latest versions (wich can handle the AVCHD format)
And finally you´ll have to decide what your finished product will be ( you may keep authoring SD DVDs for some time but you´ll also have the option to start authoring BD discs or AVCHD discs-in DVD-/+R- in case you´re not planning to purchase a Bluray burner just yet)
Good luck

[Dorthe2107]

Thanks for the reply. Sorry to find out about the pc - that was not in the budget /
Is there a special forum in here for home video makers?
I have some questions that I cannot find answers to.... e.g. How do others and experienced home video makers store or save their AVI (from mini dv tape in my case) - or don't they save the 19 gb files? I keep running out of space.....

[TreeTops]

I have a feeling that most people would store their treasured avi's on hard drives. There are lots of threads about tapes degrading over time. Another problem is the format changes over time. Remember tape formats change, the recorders change and disappear.

I remember reel to reel tape recorders, then Micro tapes, then miniDV tapes, then VHS, then VHSC, then Hi8 and on and on. Some just disappear from the consumer market like betamax.

Hard drives will be here a while longer then we will go to something else to store our large video files. Maybe holograms or something not yet invented.